West Facade
Atop the 30-foot tower, a roof deck emerges through the trees, providing a unique vantage point of the structure below and the surrounding townscape.
In this sustainable home in Silicon Valley, the primary suite opens to a deck and fern garden with large, sliding glass doors.
The first floor consists of two long and narrow structures that intersect in an open kitchen, providing distinct programmatic areas and settling into the tree-lined landscape, allowing yards to surround and permeate each room.
Through an integral relationship between use, form, and material, the Low/Rise House responds sensitively to site, nature, and neighborhood, creating a new type of suburban living – both urban and rural.
The combined kitchen/dining room is finished with walnut cabinets while the clerestory windows are continued in the same format as the rest of the house.
The residence reimagines suburban housing by combining both shared and private programs. The design team found inspiration in the composition of traditional ranch houses and farm towers. The result allows for natural ventilation, solar energy generation, natural lighting, and complete immersion into the site.
The exterior of the Erica Residence is made up of smooth plaster, painted wood siding, stained cedar accent features, and board-formed concrete site walls.
The rainscreen cladding on the Rolling Hills Estate helps the house to breath while reducing heating and cooling needs. The residence also includes an underground water retention system and a living green roof that allows for storm runoff.
The Moody Road House looks out to incredible valley views thanks to careful site planning.
The exterior siding of the Moody Road House is made up of ipe wood and includes rain screen detailing. Atkinson worked with Santa Cruz-based landscape architect Joni L. Janecki to complete the nature-immersed lot.
While you’re there, make sure to try out activities or sports that take advantage of the incredible natural surroundings. You’ll be able to rent a boat, kayak, snow shoes, a bicycle, or fishing and diving equipment. You can even sign up for a group fishing trip or have a chance to see the winter lights.
Each hut consists of two bedrooms with double beds, a small alcove, bathroom, shower, and small kitchen. Stinessen made sure to provide enough built-in storage for visitors, while also keeping the surfaces natural and raw.
This boutique hotel on Norway's Manshausen Island is made up of four sea cabins—one of which juts out from a natural ledge. Each of them fit two to four travelers or a family of five.
In Palm Springs, Sander Architects created an energy-efficient hybrid prefab home that’s designed to stay naturally cool in the desert heat, which often climbs to triple digits in the summer.
The courtyard is just one of many open spaces that will be highly utilized—in the non-winter months anyway. Concrete worked well with developing the language of FlatPak. The second level is a wood panel that can be clad in corrugated metal or cedar—different layers that can be plugged in like covers on your cellphone.
The master bedroom features a low-level picture window that opens out to the green space behind the house.
“It was a major decision to put the kitchen in the center where everything would revolve around it,” says Lazor. “We did this simply by following what patterns we observed—it was just where people gravitated.” The bar stools are by Blu Dot, and the chairs by Charles and Ray Eames.
Front view of the FlatPak House in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When the architect first told his wife about his idea, she said, “It’s about time you focus on a house for me!” He continues, “It’s like the old story about the cobbler whose kids have no shoes.”
Retirees Dr. Mary Ellen Kennedy and Robert Dault tasked architect Charlie Lazor with bringing a prefabricated 2,100-square-foot home to their lakeside property, located in one of rural Ontario’s unorganized territories.
One of the main features of the Axiom 2450 model is a porch that's enclosed by a 12-foot rectractable glass wall.
The Axiom 2790, ideal for sites oriented toward one direction, features a covered terrace.
A Lakeside Prefab in New Jersey
A New Zealand expat and her son use their prefabricated lakeside New Jersey retreat as an outdoorsy counterpoint to city life.
Photo by: Mark Mahaney
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Sandy Chilewich and architect Joe Sultan, proprietors of textiles firm Chilewich|Sultan designed their own vacation home together in Columbia County, in upstate New York. On a simple wooded lot, they developed a contemporary loft-style home with furnishings from B&B Italia, Feel Good side chairs by Flexform, and a suspended, contemporary Ergofocus fireplace from Focus.
In the dining area are a Gamma table by Cappellini, Eames molded plastic chairs, and a Flotation pendant by Ingo Maurer.
Outside, Sultan added a stone wall to anchor and extend the structure into the landscape.
At the end of a steep driveway, off a road less graveled, await the happy innkeepers: Chris Brown, Sarah Johnson, and Michael and Joshua, two of their three sons.
The house was deliberately sited to preserve the two-acre property’s existing trees, three of which can be seen protruding through the surface of a rear deck.
Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman linger in the breezeway designed to draw eyes, and footsteps, from the driveway through the house to the gently sloping backyard and swimming pool beyond.
In 2003, Resolution: 4 Architecture was one of 16 firms who participated in the Dwell Home Design Invitational—a competition to design a modern prefab home for $200,000. Their winning design, constructed in Pittsboro, North Carolina, is a groundbreaking case study that combines prefabricated construction with contemporary, modern design.